


Every Line is a Place on a Map

by galfridian



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-13
Updated: 2010-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/pseuds/galfridian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time deceives, disguises itself; it is not a year, a minute, an era, but a map. This is your map from London, UK to Dårlig Ulv Stranden, Norway to the edge of time. The Doctor/Rose Tyler; Bad Wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Line is a Place on a Map

**Author's Note:**

> This is an exploration, a weaving journey in metaphor. It features Bad Wolf, that mystifying creation whose name appears without warning. Thank yous go to, again, Jen, Ishie, and Ivy, without whom this would be a mess.

She learns this lesson early: Time doesn't obey its rules. It imprisons creation, commanding it to follow a crudely carved course from a first moment to a last, but counts itself above this constraint. Time deceives, disguises itself; it is not a year, a minute, an era, but a map. The path to the nearest point weaves, loops around itself. The story may end before it begins.

Somewhere on the map, an extraordinary man steps out of his extraordinary vessel. He says: _Did I mention it also travels in time?_

This is not the beginning. It is a beginning, but not the beginning.

(Neither is this:

_I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them...in time and space. A message to lead myself here._

Nor is this the ending:

_Quite right, too._

Or this:

_He needs you. That's very me._)

The Doctor does not follow time's design. He navigates it, sails across it like he knows it all from memory. So she must too. She learns.

Somewhere else along her journey, she waits.

She do not look like a woman who's waiting; she blends in well enough.

She has become stilted by time again, torn from the heavens to a life of blindly blundering through, but an unnameable intuition insists she wait -- _something in the air, something coming_. Just wait. She can't articulate this feeling, so she keeps it secret. She waits.

One beginning is hidden. Blink and you miss it, a man in an alley on New Year's Eve. Drunk, she mistakenly believes. She is young -- so young -- there.

At a crossroad, her feet sink into the damp shore. She stands between a pair of outwardly identical men, and her heart is so heavy it might disappear beneath the sand.

One man will continue his indefinite voyage across generations, while one must step down from immortality, and her choice is impossible. She loves them both.

She see the Earth consumed, its crumbled remains drifting away from each other. He holds her hand, takes she for chips, and her grief melts away.

She remembers a place where she believe the Doctor is infallible. She remember her disappointment, deep and bitter, the day she learns he is not without fault: She and Mickey wait, terribly uncertain of their fates, as he dances with Madame de Pompadour.

This second reality of hers is withering. She is a poison; she should not be here, yet for now she must be.

She sits beside a man who is also withering. He is ill-made, a corruption of creation. He will die soon. His frailty causes she more grief than he has caused her before, but she loves him more each day. He is still the Doctor -- her Doctor -- and she loves him.

Here is the place where they rest: His body is new -- New New Doctor -- and his spirits are high. She follows him as he bounds happily between dates and planets. She encounters darkness, but her hand is in his. For a moment, the dark cannot touch her.

Along the way, the path splinters. It will take her away from her family. She sees it on the horizon, she anticipates it, she dreams of that titanic moment. Bad Wolf carries her and she carries Bad Wolf, but Bad Wolf cannot remain under time's yoke. So long as she remains here, she builds Bad Wolf's rage.

When at last she and the moment come together, thunder cracks savagely in the sky, and the Earth opens. There is heat and light -- they remind her of the heart of the TARDIS -- and she steps forward undaunted.

She emerges gasping for breath, two entities one again.

Before she reaches Dårlig Ulv Stranden:

She gives her life for his.

He gives his life for hers.

They go in circles, exchanging the roles, needing only their belief in each other.

The other side of the fissure is not twenty-first century London. It's far beyond that. She is alone, but she is magnificent.

Time passes, she supposes, and she forgets her name.

The Doctor's arrival does not startle her; time is hers to view as she pleases, and she know that in his timeline, he has already found her once before. When he arrives, he is dying. No regeneration could save him, had he any left. He collapses at her feet. She could heal his broken body, preserve his life, but she knows it would be wrong. Everything must die. 

He whispers two words against her hair. "Bad Wolf." She sends the words out into time.

His eyes close. His final breath is drawn, yet this is not the end of the story; it is the beginning.

Somewhere frightful and uncertain, the Doctor smells a storm on the horizon. His eyes are dark and serious as he embraces she. Caresses and sighs follow. She is steeling herself against the storm.

For a millennium, she simply watches. A thousand years stretch across the map, a patch of empty, barren land along her journey. Many die and many are born, and she watches them all. She watches him. And patiently, she waits. He will come to her again, so she need not go to him; she knows because she designed it. He may evade time's discipline, but time bows before her.

Time becomes her plaything. She spins it like a globe and watches it whirl. Sometimes she lets it slow to a stop, and she watches what unfolds. More often than not, she sees the Doctor. She sees his complex timeline unfold; she watches over him as he journeys from Gallifrey to Earth, from Earth to countless places, and back. She sees his face change once, twice, eight times before he becomes the Doctor she first met. She may not be with him, but she will keep him safe.

Somewhere sacred and beautiful, long ago for her now, she goes to him at a time she calls night. The TARDIS drifts through the void. It's just them, has been since the Doctor returned Adam to London. She find him in his room, the place on the TARDIS he least often goes, half-heartedly tinkering with some gadget.

She comes to the Doctor's side and waits. After a moment, he looks up at her. He finds no pity or sorrow in her eyes, only admiration and love. He hesitates, but only briefly, then reaches for her.

He arrives in the midst of his eleventh change, although he has been moving toward her for years, following the stars to her like an explorer following a compass north.

She holds him through this change. His eyes betray his disbelief, but he curls into her and digs his fingers into her skin in desperation until it's done.

"Rose." He fears what she has done.

"Doctor," she says. She starts at the sound of her voice; she has passed centuries in silence. "I was knitted into a creature greater than myself. It couldn't be undone. We became a new thing." She silences his protests with a kiss. "It's all right," she promises. He rests.

He remains with her for a time. They exchange stories. She unrolls time before him; together, they gather sands from Gallifrey at its birth and soil from the last planet in creation to die. Their love fully unfurls at last. Yet everything must pass, and he must travel onward.

This is the end, she thinks.

Somewhere on the map, an extraordinary man steps into his extraordinary vessel. He's hurtling toward 1590 when a voice whispers, "go back." He spins around, but he's alone in his ship. The whisper echoes, urging him.

He returns to 2005.


End file.
